FROM HURRICANES Irma and Maria in 2017 to Hurricane Dorian this year – all of which caused devastation in the Caribbean with their Category 5 strength – the future of a region marked by unprecedented climate is being foretold.

Dr Tannecia Stephenson, head of the Physics Department and the Climate Studies Research Group at the University of the West Indies (UWI), made this observation recently.

“Irma, Maria and Dorian hint at what the future hurricane will be like,” she said, speaking last Thursday at the UWI Science for Today public lecture series, held on the topic ‘Abandon ship? A science take on disaster risk reduction and small island resilience in light of Dorian’.

According to the physicist, the hurricanes’ behaviour line up with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections for future hurricanes, including increases in rainfall rates, increase in maximum wind speeds, rapid intensification and maintenance of strength.

Irma and Dorian, for example, had wind speeds of up to 185 miles per hour, tying as the second-strongest Atlantic hurricanes by wind speed, only after Hurricane Allen in 1980. Maria, for its part, packed maximum winds of 175 miles per hour.

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